Insights

Highlights

Workshop

The Delicate Art of Facilitation

2019 Information Architecture Conference

Good facilitation skills are essential for many IA tasks and projects. This IAC2019 workshop builds activities around real-world scenarios from the presenters' own experiences that participants can use to plan for and guide their own work.

Workshop

How to Design Great Dashboards and Visualizations for SaaS and Enterprise Applications

UXPA 2018 Conference

In their UXPA 2018 workshop, Lisa Battle and Rachel Sengers discussed how to ensure a good user experience for dashboards, brainstorm together on the common building blocks of dashboard design, and generate ideas for visualizations to quickly communicate data.

Presentation

Micro-Visualizations: Small Visualizations That Make A Big Impact

UXPA Conference - June 26, 2018

In this UXPA session, Lisa Battle and Rachel Sengers explored the use of micro-visualizations to enhance user experience and how to best design effective visualizations.

In this NFAIS Conference presentation, Duane Degler explores strategies and considerations for enhancing the meaning in content, and to more closely align searchers and the available information resources.

Conference

No Static: IA for Dynamic Information Environments

IA Summit 2018 Conference

In this IA Summit talk, Duane Degler provides an overview of the dynamic information landscape, positions the role of IA firmly at the heart of its ecosystem design, and provides ideas for weaving this into your practice.

Presentation

Know Thyself, and To Thine Users Be True: Understanding and Managing Biases that Can Influence UX Work

UXPA 2018 Conference

In her UXPA 2018 session, Karen Bachmann explores ways to discover and discuss biases constructively before they undermine work, look at case studies of products that suffered from hidden biases, and consider pragmatic approaches to manage their influence in our projects.

Conference

Going Global: The Intersection of IA and UX in a Multilingual Environment

IA Summit 2018 Conference

In their IA Summit talk, Kate Blanch, Rachel Sengers, and Janette Shew discuss how to structure multilingual content to support its successful presentation and delivery, and how to provide innovative designs that facilitate exploration of that content.

In this MCN2017 session, Duane Degler will moderate a panel discussing how institutions and projects are using linked data and modern technologies to achieve long-term outcomes for themselves and others.

Presentation

Split Focus: Designing Applications for Multiple Monitor Setups

UXPA Conference - June 8, 2017

In this UXPA 2017 session, Lisa Battle, Michael Owens, and Rachel Sengers discuss new UX design patterns and challenges that arise in software and web-based application design for multiple monitors, illustrating them with real project examples

Presentation

Ethics: A Human-Centered Design Goal

UXPA Conference - June 6, 2017

In this UXPA 2017 session, Karen Bachmann addresses about how to talk carrots (value) and not sticks (legality) to make ethics a core human-centered design constraint.

In this MCN2016 session, Duane Degler and Lesley Humphreys share human-centered user experience considerations and requirements that pertain specifically to the challenges faced by collaborations among multiple collections, sites, and institutions.

Presentation

Designing Great Dashboards for SaaS and Enterprise Applications

UXPA Conference - June 3, 2016

Dashboards present a great opportunity to improve user experience by providing quick answers to users’ common questions, but they are also full of potential pitfalls for design. In this session, Lisa Battle will discuss our approach to ensuring a good user experience for dashboards, focusing on 8 principles of UX design that are particularly relevant and illustrating them with real project examples.

Presentation

First Impressions Matter: Onboarding for First Time Users

UXPA Conference - June 1, 2016

First time user experience, while critical to product success, may not be getting the attention it deserves. In this talk, Lisa Battle presents design principles for great onboarding experiences that engage and inform new users, helping them become productive quickly.

Workshop

Building Relationships: Linked Data and Information Architecture

IA Summit - May 5, 2016

Linked Data has become a reality for many organizations and projects. It is increasingly baked in to the underlying data fabric of our tools and sites. This workshop offers a working knowledge of linked data and starting points for talking about it with others.

Publication

Intelligent understanding of content use

KMWorld Magazine, March 1, 2016

Using a rich network of data about how people actually use content, we can find insights by integrating it with other enterprise information sources. In this article, Duane Degler explores how it becomes a valuable input to governance processes, at both the organizational and content levels.

Workshop

Linked Open Data in Museums

Museums and the Web - April 6, 2016

This workshop at Museums and the Web 2016 is an example-rich, practical introduction to Linked [Open] Data (LOD) for museums, as well as libraries and archives. We will explore what Linked Open Data is, why it's so valuable, and how to approach it strategically.

Publication

8 Tips For Achieving User-Friendly Search

Search is an increasingly important component in desktop and mobile online experiences, yet too often search is not designed to meet the needs of users. Here, we offer a practical to-do list to achieve user-friendly search for websites and apps, particularly those serving association communities.

Presentation

Building Bridges with Taxonomy

Taxonomy Bootcamp - November 2, 2015

Enabling your taxonomy to fit into the larger universe of companies, industry standards, and public term sets gives it a solid foundation for future growth and enables semantic integration.

Publication

7 Steps for a More Accessible Association Information Ecosystem

It can be easy for associations to get buried under all the information they produce and curate. This article outlines seven steps to create an information ecosystem in which resources are accessible and up to date.

RECENT PRESENTATION

Creating Personal Profiles Across Time and Distance

SmartData Conference - August 19, 2015

Personal data capture and algorithmic modeling of user preferences and interests is maturing. In this talk, Duane Degler explores some of the considerations for longitudinal preference management, how adaptive interfaces might play a role, and how users could interact with a model at a particular time in an application.

RECENT PRESENTATION

Simplicity in Web Application Design

UXPA 2015 - June 23, 2015

Simplicity is one of the most important principles of design. But, realistically, simplicity isn’t always simple. In their UXPA 2015 presentation, Lisa Battle and Laura Chessman discuss what to try when removing functionality isn’t an option. We provide questions to ask when deciding how to simplify an application, and summarize proven design techniques to use when simplifying applications.

Recent Presentation

Designing the Next Generation of Search User Experience

UXPA 2015 - June 24, 2015

Design is coming to the forefront of effective search applications. So what do we need to know about designing for search? In this UXPA 2015 session, Duane Degler and Lisa Battle dive into the essentials for a new generation of search design.

Our insights

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Presentation

Big Data in Small Graphics: Micro-Visualizations in SaaS and Enterprise Applications

UXPA Conference, Puerto Rico – June 26, 2018

Lisa Battle, Rachel Sengers

In this UXPA session, Lisa Battle and Rachel Sengers explored the use of micro-visualizations to enhance user experience and how to best design effective visualizations.

How to Design Great Dashboards and Visualizations for SaaS and Enterprise Applications

UXPA 2018 Conference in Puerto Rico -- June 25, 2018

Lisa Battle, Rachel Sengers

In their UXPA 2018 workshop, Lisa Battle and Rachel Sengers discussed how to ensure a good user experience for dashboards, brainstorm together on the common building blocks of dashboard design, and generate ideas for visualizations to quickly communicate data.

Design Guidelines: Real-Life Stories

Information Architecture Summit, Baltimore, MD – April 5, 2013

Rachel Sengers, Lesley Humphreys, Rob Fay

As an organization grows and its products proliferate, how can it maintain a coherent sense of identity and usability across them, while allowing room for flexibility and growth? For a family of online communications channels or applications, design guidelines can document and disseminate the organization’s UX principles and patterns. This presentation offers resources and insights from both practitioners and professionals outside the field who have undertaken these types of projects together.

Developing Style Guidelines for Suites of Applications

User Focus, the UXPA DC conference, Washington, DC – October 19, 2012

Rachel Sengers, Lesley Humphreys

Many enterprises grow organically, with diverse products managed by different teams. Style guidelines provide a way for the organization brand itself and ensure consistency across its family of apps while leaving in flexibility to accommodate different contexts of use.